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Comment by pyre | Hacker News Reader

Well, in some cases it's that the people coming from overseas are willing to get paid less for the same job. The 'evil capitalist' sees this as a way to get cheaper labor.

I think that this can be alleviated without being anti-immigrant though. For example, make it easier for H1Bs to move between jobs and/or start their own businesses so that they don't have to feel so tied to the employer that they don't want to risk 'rocking the boat' too much. Or make it so that switching jobs doesn't 'reset the counter' on building up towards citizenship (or is it just a green card, I forget).

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Again, it's a zero-sum thinking error to assume that there's some fixed number of jobs and therefore more people equals lower pay. I would have made substantially less at Google if it weren't for all of the foreigners making the company a success :)

I agree that H1B transfer restrictions are bad though. If people are good enough to let into the country, then they should be free to switch jobs just like anyone else.

> Again, it's a zero-sum thinking error to assume that there's some fixed number of jobs and therefore more people equals lower pay.

I'm not stating the "more people" == "less pay". I'm stating that foreign workers are willing get paid less money, regardless of what the job pool is. They have fewer options available to them, so they accept "worse" pay for what maybe essentially the same job.

Also, the amount of jobs that are available at any point in time is fixed. Jobs are created when a company has a need to fill. Jobs aren't created just because there is an excess supply of unemployed people. They don't spring into existence out of nowhere.

Do companies create more positions just to accommodate the influx of foreign workers? Or do the amount of jobs stay the same regardless?

New people consume stuff too. Hence yes, companies most certainly create new jobs to cater to their needs.

True, but the amount of new people matters. Does 1000 people per year really move the needle all that much? How many jobs does that indirectly create?

edit: Wikipedia say that (e.g.) H1Bs are capped at 65k/year. Spread across the US, I'm curious how much this affects job creation? I could see an argument if they were concentrated in one place though.

> in some cases it's that the people coming from overseas are willing to get paid less for the same job.

Agreed that this is the case in a lot of industries, but the problem in Silicon Valley and the tech industry generally isn't the cost of workers, it's finding enough highly-skilled workers to allow companies to grow and achieve their visions.

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